The present invention relates to a method and system of displaying hardware products, and particularly to such a system involving display board panels and the like in a wall mounted environment or on a display rack.
It has become a common practice in the merchandising of hardware items or products to utilize display racks as part of point of sale merchandising techniques. Such racks often take the form of two-dimensional wall units or so-called floor merchandisers, the latter comprising a three-dimensional arrangement, such as, for example, a three or four sided rotatable rack. What this merchandising practice generally involves is the deplopment of the hardware items on peg board panels by inserting hooks of one kind or another through apertures which are generally arrayed, in an orderly way on the display board, such that the hardware items can be easily mounted or hung on the hooks. In order to guide the placement of the items in setting up the display, and to serve eventually as a means of furnishing information to the prospective customer, "out-of-stock" cards are generally suitably spaced from each other and in near abutting relationship to the display board panels. These "out-of-stock" cards are carried by the hooks, the hooks being inserted through apertures provided in the cards.
Although conventional systems for displaying hardware products in the aforedescribed way have gained acceptance and are widely used, a very severe drawback to the merchandising of hardware in this manner is that the jobber or retailer finds that he does not wat to spend the significant amount of time normally consumed in setting up the display system. For example, it quite often takes two and one-half hours to set up a complete hardware display system involving a four-sided display rack. This time consumption is partly accounted for by the fact that there is a tendency not to place the appropriate hooks into the display board panel at sufficiently close spacing with respect to adjacent hooks so that oftentimes space is lost on the panel. Consequently, the jobber or retailer has to go back and re-do a particular panel and the whole process can be very frustrating. In order to assist the jobber or retailer a schematic or general layout of the display system is sometimes furnished; that is to say, a layout which shows how the particular out-of-stock cards, as well as trays and booklet containers are to be set up on the panel. A fundamental difficulty with the use of the schematic, however, is that quite often the card numbers include digits that are very similar, such that these digits are sometimes mentally reversed, and the result is that the cards are not placed in their proper locations.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to solve the aforenoted drawbacks and difficulties and to facilitate close, neat spacing in the placement of various indicia-bearing members on a hardware display panel.
Another object is to avoid the consumption of substantial amounts of time in setting up a complete hardware display. With respect to the time period involved, the system of the present invention is effective to reduce that period from two and one-half hours to about forty minutes.